The prospect of sitting on the warm chamber floor excited him, promising to be a balm to his freezing behind, but the first thing that Sim Junho felt upon entering was icy disdain rolling off in waves from the prisoner who sat in the middle of the room, her figure prone, back arched, hands in her lap.

Regal.

He circled around her and settled on the mattress on the other side of the table, the only barrier between them, but the gulf could be a moat filled with flesh-eating gators.

Lee Seung stood by the wall, his tall figure ramrod straight, his eyes boring a hole in the wall across from him. Aggression poured from him like a storm-driven tide, threatening to tear down anything that so much as stood in his way. Or looked at his woman.

Sim Junho almost rolled his eyes, suppressed a chuckle at the spectacle, and turned his attention to the woman across from him. Kim Minjae bowed to him and lifted her chin in defiance for a fraction of a second before looking down.

The iciness of her gaze didn't faze him, though he was loath to admit that it had initially thrown him off.

She was the criminal who had orchestrated a network that smuggled men and traded treason. Yet her contemptuous disregard would have you think you were the one in the wrong....

Initially, Junho was surprised to learn that Lee Seung had been so captivated by Kim Minjae that he refused to see past the tip of his own nose. Given that Seung had rarely blinked at a pretty face before—women had always been a means to an end for him—Junho had scoffed at it as a passing fancy until he realised Seung's nose did end where Minjae's begin.

Objectively, she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Men were visual beings, and he couldn't deny that her beauty struck him deeply, though more like a fact, much like water in the ocean, snow in winter, or leaves on a tree. It wasn't just her perfect face that set her apart.

There was something about how Kim Minjae looked and carried herself—something elusive and indefinable. She had so many layers that finding a seed in a cabbage seemed easier than understanding what made Kim Minjae tick. The mystery surrounding her only added to her appeal.

A mystery fast adopting the proportions of a wrecked ship, not to mention the complications of his best field agent and someone he considered closer than a younger brother ready to bleed for her.

While Sim Junho still did not understand - nothing in his twenty and eight years had prepared him for an attachment to any human being to the point he could sacrifice himself, he picked his battles because Junho was a practical man, and Lee Seung was one of the best Joseon had seen.

"It does not have to be this difficult," Sim Junho waved a hand in the air to emphasise. "If you cooperate with us, we will prevent you from getting any punishment."

Silence.

"I know you have been repeatedly told how we can wring details out of you—" Junho said, ignoring the stiffening of Seung's body by the wall-"through other methods."

More silence.

"You do realise we have proof of what your group did, and everyone will be punished," Junho said. "It will not be pretty. We are offering you a way out. You give us details, tell us who else is involved, and we will let you and your father go in return."

She simply sat, looking at her hands.

Sim Junho sighed. This was a waste of time and energy. All those captured knew only fragments of their organisation, and so far, no one could identify the source of the information leak. It was evident that Minjae directed the group on the ground while Captain Park orchestrated the logistics. However, from what he could see, the number of people involved was relatively small. The rescue of abused women was genuine, and most believed that was their mission. The smuggling of men to the Manchu border was also carried out by a few, and they had eventually tied it to Oh Man Sik, Minjae's brother-in-law, who was also in custody along with Captain Park. They had traced some of the donors to a few powerful commoner families who merely donated cash or goods and looked the other way. To secure and trade the kind of information that had been exchanged, someone very powerful with a lot at stake had to be behind this. Yet, there had been no confessions from Captain Park either.

The question was, besides Ganghwa, how far did this extend, and who was involved?

It would be but a matter of time before this blew up, became common knowledge and wrestled out of their hands. Everyone captured would be tortured into giving the confessions their interrogators dictated. The minions would be punished, while anyone even remotely powerful would escape unscathed, especially if they were under the protection of King Injo or part of the influential Northern scholar faction. Which, of course, would defeat the whole purpose, leaving the Kingdom in even more peril than before.

Minjae once asserted that although they assisted men in crossing into Manchu territories with new identities, they never sold any state secrets or information. She raised her chin with a maddening calmness and challenged them to find her or any of the men and women involved in the rescue mission at fault. If they were, she would gladly accept any punishment they thought was just and then sat unmovingly thereafter.

Infuriatingly, she had made it more than clear that further cooperation from her would not be coming anytime soon.

If Minjae's claim were true, the situation would be even more critical because now they had little idea who was pulling the strings or how they accessed such a secretive network in the first place.

He glanced at Seung.

If her approach to him was chilly, her response to Seung was arctic. Even if she came away unscathed from this ordeal, he doubted Kim Minjae would ever thaw for Lee Seung.

Some sacrifices were bloodier than losing a limb on a battlefield.

Sim Junho felt sorry for the man.

This was before she knew what he proposed.

What Seung proposed was preposterous, and Sim Junho could not back it with a clear conscience.

Let her be back on the island. Hide the fact that the network had been compromised. Allow the perpetrators to believe everything was as it had been. Then, when they made any suspicious moves, arrest them. In return, Minjae's family on the island would be forgiven for taking part in smuggling the slaves as long as they could prove they were innocent of espionage.

Sim Junho would then find a cow that would give birth to flying pigs.

"She would simply warn everyone to lay low," Junho had exploded at the asinine plan.

At the time of this conversation, Seung and Junho stood outside in the chamber's courtyard where Minjae was confined. The wind nipped at his nose and ate his ears. He was not in a mood to pander to Seung's strange whimsies.

"Not if she wants to prove they didn't trade secrets," Seung had reasoned calmly.

"What if they did?" Sim Junho countered coldly.

Seung had not replied.

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"This will get all of us arrested for being accomplices, you moron!"

Sim Junho battled an urge to draw Seung's blood to warm his freezing hands. But he paused when Seung had looked at him with eyes that rivalled the wind's chill. "I have a plan."

What Seung outlined in the next few moments had cooled the blood in his veins faster than the frozen puffs his lungs pumped out in the air.

Kim Minjae had a weakness. And it wasn't Lee Seung.

Sim Junho could bet his life if heartbreak had a sound, it would sound like Seung's voice at that moment.

Sim Junho forced himself to return to the moment, and the unpleasant task before him.

"All right. I see you will not stop being stubborn. I will issue an arrest warrant for your father, your sister, Ko Yoon and Kiesang Han."

No movement. Even her eyelashes stayed still.

"In Hanyang, the men you met the other day have already been arrested, along with your brother-in-law."

No movement.

"That leaves only one man, and I will issue the warrant today - Choi Se-min."

Minjae's eyes snapped up, and an emotion flashed in her gaze so dark that if it left her eyes and inked the sky, it would swallow the sun.

Bullseye!

"Please leave him alone. Lord Se-min has no knowledge of the existence of this network. He does not even know such a network exists," she said. Sin Junho thought he heard a slight tremor in her voice.

He glanced at Seung and saw his jaw tighten at her defence of another man. Junho was beginning to understand why Seung had proposed what he had. It would take extensive logistics, a great deal of subterfuge and risks that could cost lives if their true intent came to the fore. But what was life without some risks, and well, it was definitely worth giving a shot.

"Ah! But I thought you said you met him at that secure location to discuss the rescue of a woman."

"Yes, that's right. He does not know how we put the rescue into effect."

It was more than what she had spoken for the past two days.

Sim Junho slapped her letter to Se-min on the table, along with the two books and the portrait of the old lady on the desk.

Minjae's eyes widened at the letter, before a strange expression flitted across her eyes.

"My wager would be you did not meet him for any rescue. No one in your group has any knowledge of such rescue. A runaway slave from Choi's residence has found her way to you. But I doubt you came all the way to the capital city to inform him about it. There are only two reasons a young, beautiful woman with a mysterious past meets a young man in the dark of the night. Either she is passing a secret or has romantic-"

"Stop!" Minjae's face took a green sheen as if she was nauseous. "Please stop. I told you I was a runaway slave, and his family has been on the hunt for me. He-he helped me escape."

"So you went to thank him in a secluded house at midnight? Alone? To settle his debt in kind?" Sim Junho was deliberately baiting Minjae.

However, Junho misjudged Minjae's resilience. Though she turned even more nauseous green around the gills, her expressions shut down. She simply shrugged and said, "I am from Ganghwa. We return favours differently."

For a moment, Sim Junho was speechless before an insane urge to laugh overtook him at her audacity in calling his bluff. Any virtuous Joseon woman would have consented to anything to eliminate suspicion of being unchaste. Not Kim Minjae. He was part irritated and part intrigued by her haughty act, and a whole lot exasperated. However, he sobered when, from the corner of his eyes, he saw Seung whip his face towards the back of her head with an expression so explosively raw that he feared the chamber would catch fire.

"There is a third option - you are blackmailing him for his past gambling habits, and you are forcing him into spying for you. Perhaps the money you had was from the gambling den. Is that why those slaves want to kill you?"

"I do not care what you think of me, but he is not a spy. Please leave Lord Choi Se-min out of this," Minjae said stubbornly.

"I am afraid you do not dictate how we conduct our investigations," Sim Junho said. "You should worry about yourself. Your lack of cooperation is already unacceptable. So we will need other ways to compensate. So either you tell us everything, reveal the reason for your visit to Lord Se-min, or we ask the man himself. And don't try to weave the slave story again. It's five years too late. Except for one, who is already accounted for, no slaves are missing from Choi's household in Hanyang or nearby towns, let alone the fact that slaves do not have the kind of money you had. If you stole, Lord Choi’s slaves would capture you, not want to kill you. The arrest of Choi Se-min will cause some problems with His Excellency Lord Choi, but we will keep it discreet, and I am sure he will understand. He would not want the news to trickle to His Majesty. That would end his career in the court for good. And perhaps, while we are at it, we should turn you over to the Royal Investigation Bureau, where your limbs will be crushed like dried leaves."

He let that sink in. Kim Minjae should have been terrified. She was alone, at the mercy of men who could cause her great harm.

Lee Seung had brought Kim Minjae to their 'special' house on the outskirts of the city. It was dilapidated from the outside and owned by an old couple. In reality, it had an entire underground network of chambers used for purposes best not known by the average person on the road. Not that it would concern any upstanding citizen because the chambers only saw criminals and very few select underground agents and inspectors who needed information without letting the entire population of Joseon know.

If they did something untoward towards the prisoner, that would go unreported.

Kim Minjae was the first woman they had brought into the house. Every officer in the rooster was morally upright and would cut themselves dead before looking at a woman with disrespectful eyes, but criminals were seldom accorded the same respect.

That itself should have made her afraid. She had no way of knowing that even if she had not been someone for whom Lee Seung could go on a murderous rage, they still would have kept her in the chambers above ground.

It didn't.

Worse, having Lee Seung in the mix meant her safety, and the message that she was off limits to everyone else had to be loud and clear. Hence, she was not in handcuffs or restrained.

Both Junho and Seung knew she was lethal if left to her own devices. However, she also possessed a brilliant mind. It did not take a genius to understand that. Not only would she not do anything reckless, but she probably read the room better than any of them expected. Her following words proved his hunch correct.

"But that will not serve your purpose, will it, Lord Sim?" Minjae said, her voice underlined with a knife edge.

She looked over her shoulder, her slender neck holding her head in a taut line of grace and defiance, and this time, she addressed Seung directly. "Dari, let us stop wasting our time and pretending this is an inquisition. You have no interest in what I have to say. You have brought me here because you think I will be useful bait to lure your culprits out," Minjae said, her shoulder gracefully straining against an invisible pressure.

Sim Junho felt his facial muscles move with a surge of respect.

A heavy, meaningful pause followed her statement.

Seung left his spot by the wall, and sat down beside him. He looked at Minjae, his expression unreadable. When he spoke, his voice was devoid of expressions.

"You are right. I am not interested in what you have to say. You have lied so much that I do not know if the shadow following you is real or an illusion."

Minjae looked straight into his eyes. The tension between them hung so thick it felt like he was wading through mud. And just for a fleeting moment, Minjae's mask of frozen derision fell away to reveal a blinding flash of emotions so raw that it took Sim Junho's breath away.

Hurt. Accusation. Betrayal. Disappointment.

She looked at Seung as if her pedestal had crumbled beneath the weight of reality.

It made Sim Junho curious. On the outside, it was as clear as the sky that it was Mnjae who had strung Seung along with her lies. Yet, how the heck did she manage to make everyone feel as if she was the one who had been wronged?

If it bothered Lee Seung, he didn't show it. He looked back at her with expressions carved out of a rock, his posture as tense as a volcano caging a lava of hurt, waiting to erupt.

"There is something you need to do for us," Seung stated.

Minjae nodded.

Sim Junho watched their interplay with fascination. When it came to Lee Seung, Kim Minjae was a mass of nerves. Sim Junho filed away the information for future use while Lee Seung proceeded to tell her what he had in mind.

Kim Minjae sat through it all, her mask of indifference falling back into place as she listened.

"I have a condition," she said after Seung was done.

"You are in no position to negotiate," Seung said coldly.

"Then turn me over to the Royal Investigation Bureau," she said flatly.

Seung's eyes narrowed.

"What do you want?" Sim Junho hastened before they killed each other with the ice picks they were darting at each other.

She turned to him. "Sir, as long as I do what you have asked me to, you will not pursue Lord Choi Se-min regarding this network nor ask him about our interaction from that night," she lifted her chin.

Seung's nerve pulsed so fiercely in his jaw that Junho feared it would leap out any moment.

"All right," Junho agreed quickly.

Minjae turned to look at Seung, who looked back at her stonily. She lifted an eyebrow.

Unbelievable.

"You have my word," Seung said after what felt like an eternity.